When Wiles finally found the final light in 1993, what was the reaction?
Wiles returned to Cambridge, England to speak at a conference, but nobody realized that he was going to reveal a proof of the worlds most notorious mathematical problem. The mathematical community was astonished – this was the proof of the century. Wiles was on the front page of the New York Times, he was being interviewed on CNN, he was the worlds most famous mathematician. He had proved the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, and hence the Last Theorem. He had apparently achieved his childhood dream. But that wasnt the end of the story. All proofs have to be checked before they can be accepted. That summer a team of referees examined the proof line by line. Slowly an error began to emerge – a fundamental mistake which destroyed the whole proof. There is a saying in mathematics: A problem worthy of attack, proves its worth by fighting back. Fermat seemed to be having the last laugh. Wiles immediately locked himself away, and attempted to fix the error. How did the community react to the erro
